The author suggests that the general tendency to overestimate the economic success of communist countries by Western scholars before the breakup of the Soviet Union was due primarily to a failure to take proper account of demographic factors, and particularly declines occurring in life expectancy. "The first section reviews the anomalous history of mortality trends in Central and Eastern Europe and the USSR between the end of the Second World War and the 'end of the Cold War'. The second draws inferences about economic performance in those countries from their mortality trends. The third examines some characteristic differences in mortality trends between those areas in which communist rule has recently collapsed and those in which it continues, and speculates about the significance of the distinction. The final section discusses the significance of current mortality trends for post-communist societies, especially as they pertain to the prospective transition to a stable economic and political order."